Tag: roosevelt

How popular is the baby name Roosevelt in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, see baby names similar to Roosevelt and check out all the blog posts that mention the name Roosevelt.

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Number of Babies Named Roosevelt

Posts that Mention the Name Roosevelt

I searched historical records for personal names including the word “snow,” and here’s some of what I spotted…

Snowball

I found dozens of people named Snowball, including Snowball Craddock (female), born in 1915 in North Carolina. Here she is on the 1930 U.S. Census:

Snowdrift

I found several people named Snowdrift, including Arthur Snowdrift Thornton (male), born in 1883 in Virginia.

Snowflake

I found dozens people named Snowflake, including Snowflake Reinke (female), born in 1907 in North Dakota. Here she is on the 1910 U.S. Census:

Notice how her older siblings have traditional names like Maria and Ludwig (their parents were immigrants from Germany) whereas she and her younger brother, “Theo. Roosevelt,” have much more creative/American names.

(By the way, did you that there’s a town in Arizona with the unlikely name Snowflake? The founders were a pair of Mormon pioneers named Erastus Snow and William Jordan Flake.)

Snowman

I found dozens people named Snowman, including Snowman W. Doe (male), born in 1924 in Massachusetts. Here he is on the 1930 U.S. Census:

Snowstorm

I found several people named Snowstorm, including Snow Storm Stokes (male), born in 1906 in Arkansas.

When the NPS was created on August 25, 1916, there were only 35 national parks and monuments. (The world’s first, Yellowstone, had been established in 1872.)

Nowadays the agency oversees 411 units. These units are located in the 50 states and beyond, and include national monuments (82), national historic sites (78), national parks (59), national historical parks (50), national memorials (30), national battlefields (11), national seashores (10), national lakeshores (4), national scenic trails (3), and more.

Let’s celebrate the upcoming centenary with over 100 baby names that pay tribute to the national parks specifically:

The derivation of Kenai is unknown, but it could come from either Dena’ina Athabascan (“big flat” or “two big flats and river cut-back” or “trees and brush in a swampy marsh”), Russian (“flat barren land”), or Iniut (“black bear”).

Back in 1907, the baby name Theta debuted on the SSA’s baby name list, making the top 1,000 for the first and only time:

1909: 7 baby girls named Theta

1908: 6 baby girls named Theta

1907: 20 baby girls named Theta (rank: 868th) [debut]

1906: unlisted

1905: unlisted

Theta was not only the top debut name that year, but it was also one of the top debut names of the entire decade (tied with Rosevelt, a misspelling of Roosevelt that debuted in 1900 with 20 baby boys).

Here are the SSA and SSDI numbers side by side:

Year

SSA

SSDI

1909

7 Thetas

13 Thetas

1908

6 Thetas

21 Thetas

1907

20 Thetas

36 Thetas

1906

unlisted

6 Thetas

1905

unlisted

8 Thetas

While neither set of data is perfect, both indicate that Theta saw increased usage in 1907. I can’t figure out why, though. Literature is often a good bet for this time period, but so far I’ve been unable to link Theta to a particular book or story.

Do you have any idea where Theta came from?

P.S. If you’d like to try a search and want to eliminate all the other Greek letters from your results, add this to your search string:

Remember when 3-year-old birthday boy Adolf Hitler Campbell caught everyone’s attention back in 2008 for being named after the most infamous dictator of all time?

Believe it or not, a similar thing happened way back in 1943 — right in the middle of WWII.

Joseph and Bertha Mittel of Astoria, Queens, welcomed their seventh child in January of 1943 and decided to name him Adolf Hitler Mittel.

Joseph said that “the whole thing started as a joke. Before the baby was born, I bet my wife that she would have triplets and that if she didn’t I’d name the baby Adolf Hitler. And I did.”

Bertha didn’t care for the name, “but [she] named the other kids and [she] thought he ought to have his say this once.”

Adolf Hitler Mittel became front-page news across the country. Here’s some of what Joseph told the press:

“Yes, sir, the baby’s name is Adolf Hitler and it’s not a joke.” declared the father, an unemployed woodworker.

“The real Adolf Hitler doesn’t mean anything to me, but I’m of German-Austrian descent and that’s one reason why I picked the name. I don’t think the name will be a handicap, because after all there are lots of people named after persons in the same class as Hitler, such as Napoleon, Caesar and others.

“He’ll grow up and be a good man despite the name.”

Needless to say, the public was not supportive.

And, almost immediately, Joseph announced that he was willing to change it. “I certainly don’t want to hurt the little guy’s future. Judging from the riding the papers and the public are giving us, the only thing to do is to find him another name.”

That new name? The very patriotic Theodore Roosevelt Mittel.

Mother Mittel said she always liked the name Theodore; Father Mittel said she always admired Theodore Roosevelt–and they filed the name forthwith with the Jamaica office of the board of health.

Dr. Ernest L. Stebbins, New York City’s Commissioner of Health at the time, called the name change a “humanitarian move.”

I only recently noticed that Behind the Name, one of my favorite websites for baby name definitions, has a page called United States Popularity Analysis — a “computer-created analysis of the United States top 1000 names for the period 1880 to 2012.”